


Like A Family

by supervillainesses



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Ugh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supervillainesses/pseuds/supervillainesses
Summary: My first fic for them, actually. Written a long time ago. Lacking in finesse, but still cute. Harley arrives on Ivy’s doorstep, beaten and hurt, and as Ivy nurses her back, she formulates a plan for revenge.





	

Of the things Pam expected to see at her front door, the Bat was so low on the list that it ranked almost negative. Low, because she had been (regrettably) on the straight and narrow for the past six weeks.

Low, because her front door was now located on an old house outside Gotham City limits. Low, because it was four in the morning, and she was only half-dressed, with her hair done up and white specks of acne medication sprinkled here and there on her face—she was mostly plant, sure, but certain aspects of her were so frustratingly human.

“What do you want?” Ivy crossed her arms, trying her best to come off as at least awake, if at least moderately composed. A t-shirt and her—oh god—period panties were not exactly things she’d like to wear to duke it out with the Caped Crusader. “Some of us actually _sleep_ at night, you know.”

"I found something that, frankly, belongs with you.”

Ivy arched a brow. Belonged with her? What an odd phrase, especially with his strained tone. Generally, Batman was straight man to his various collection of Bat Babies, so the wavering in his tone was just slightly alarming.

“I doubt it,” Pam tried to close the door, but his gloved hand caught it, forcing it open.

“She refused to go to the hospital,” his words were a guttural whisper. “And, God help me, you’re better for her than… _that_.”

The pulse in Pam’s neck thrummed like her heart.

"Oh?” From behind the Bat’s shoulder, Pam could spy a glimpse of blond in the piercing moonlight. She swallowed against the lump in her throat; pride kept her cool, and she leaned against the wall, trying for nonchalance. “And just what has my _dear_ Harleen gotten herself into this time? A playground fight? A boy being naught—”

Without a word, Batman shot up into the air, his grappling hook latching onto the roof from the sound of it, leaving Pam alone with Harley for the first time in over a month. She could hear Batman running atop the house, and honestly, some part of her wanted to go with him. Just so she wouldn’t have to see this.

Harley smiled, her teeth pink with blood in the dark. “He got me good this time, Red. Pow! Right in the kisser. Puddin’s such a good shot…”

She could say she told her so. She could yell at her. She could make light of it. But the sight of Harley, her favorite and only rightfully bought dress (“With my own money, Pammy! I used cash and everything. Didn’t even think of stealing it!”) torn and bloodied, bruises smudged across her skin like grease paint, wounded Pam. Her face, her arms, her legs…everywhere. Some old, some new. It had, indeed, been a long six weeks out of Gotham.

"Gee, Red!” Harley wrapped her arms around Pam’s neck. “I ain’t even cryin’, and I’m the one Mista J roughed up!”

Pam’s arms encircled Harley’s waist so hard the two of them fell back onto the dusty floor.

“Harley, you stupid, stupid little girl.” Pam could feel her tears soak into Harley’s hair, taste her shampoo in her mouth. “You idiotic little thing. You dumb, dumb—”

“Hey, hey! I thought the Bat brought me here because you’d make me feel better, just like I told him ya would. Don’t gotta go being so—” At this, Pam squeezed her so tight Harley lost her words. “Okay, okay. We can both be sad. But, hey, listen, while you’re over here crying I’m gonna go lie down for six and a half centuries until my head stops feel like the circus came to town, sur la cranium.”

Harley pried herself from Pam. Pam watched her get shakily to her feet, footsteps as awkward as a fawn’s. She was just able to stand in time to halt her friend’s fall. Harley then lapsed into what could only be classified as a giggle fit.

“You have a concussion, buttercup.” Ivy concluded with a sigh, heaving Harley’s arm over her shoulder.

She wasn’t crying anymore, but her throat was raw, and her voice still carried the unevenness of tears. Somehow, it was more embarrassing than the actual outburst, and she found her cheeks and ears burning a hot red as she got Harley to the foot of the bed.

“Don’t drop me!” Harley exclaimed as Pam tried to ease her onto the bed, nothing more than a mattress on the floor, piled high with comforters and duvets and pillows, which she was grateful for as both she and Harley crashed down into it. “See, you dropped me!”

“Only because you _freaked out, you moron_.” Pam groaned, rubbing her head, and remembered Harley’s condition a second too late. She sat up and found Harley smiling, a slightly vacant and dopey expression. “What?”

"You called me buttercup,” she sighed, wiggling into the blankets. “I like it when you call me flower names, Pam-Pam. Mistah J,” her smile weakened, and she looked away, toward the bookshelf, “Mistah J only calls me cute things when he wants something. You call me them all the time! It’s so nice. You’re so nice, Red.”

Pam grumbled something she hoped sounded like “No, I’m not,” as she made like she was trying to disentangle her legs from the blankets and sheets. It wasn’t like she was hiding her blush; she was already blushing before.

“But ya are, Pam! I mean, you still hit me on the head every once in a while, or, you know, throw me around. Sometimes you even pretend like we ain’t even friends. But you apologize most times, you even _cry_ for me sometimes. And you talk to me about all my troubles and whatnots—Joker doesn’t even ask me what my day’s been like, unless I’ve got money in my hands. And, oooooooh, if I even _try_ to talk to him about you and Selina, he gets so mad! It’s like he doesn’t want me to have any friends but him!”

Pam thought her throat might close up, or her face would get so hot the acne medication might melt from her face.

The old house had only one bedroom, a bathroom beside it, and the kitchen fit seamlessly in with the living room. It felt wrong, somehow, to use the bedroom when she was only going to squat in the house for another month, tops. But she did help herself to the kitchen, and a little sweet-talking (and spore action) with the representative from the electric company got her most of her utilities for free.

"I’ve asked you a million times before,” Pam raised her voice from the kitchen, filling a bucket with water and ice. “What do you see in that—louse? He demeans you, _yells_ at you, and now he _beats_ you.”

Pam cursed. The water had risen over the edge of the bucket without her realizing. A vine from the cracked window beat her to shutting off the water, and it rubbed affectionately across her cheek, soothing her. She filled the second bucket with warm water, to clean Harley’s wounds.

"He—he—” Pam closed her eyes as Harley’s voice broke. “He loves me. Really. He’s…he’s gotta.”

Ivy placed the buckets on the floor beside the mattress. If Harley had been crying, she wasn’t now. Pam dunked a washcloth into the icy water. Harley’s eyes were wide and yearning for it, and she sighed as the cold cloth draped over her forehead and eyes.

“Where’s Selina when you need her? I think snuggling with a cat would hit the spot right now.”

At this, Pam actually chuckled. “I’m sure she’s out ripping off museums of more priceless cat worship BS. You’d think the world would be out of it by now, considering so much of it’s in her apartment.”

“Haaa,” it was a pitiful attempt at laughter, but the sound eased Pam’s nerves. “Ow! Too hot!”

Pam drew the second washcloth away from Harley’s bruised mouth, but reapplied at once.

“It is not; you just have to deal with it until I’m done.”

Harley grumbled, but didn’t protest as Pam moved to the neck. “So, why are you here, Red? Kinda low class, even for me.”

“You aren’t low class,” she corrected her flatly. “I needed sunlight. Greenery. I needed space. Selina’s off doing her thing, everyone from Arkham is either back in or lying low, and you—well, the city’s a dull place without someone to share it with.”

“Yeah, I feel ya. So many people, but no one to see. Listen, Pam, I’ve got a _real_ heavy question to ask ya, but I’m gonna have to ask ya to put down that washcloth and get into an, um, not willing to hit position.”

Ivy sucked in a breath. “I wouldn’t lay a finger on you like this, Harley.”

"Well, lie down anyway. I’m cold and there ain’t a fluffy cat here to keep me snuggly.”

Rolling her eyes, Pam tossed the blooded washcloth into the bucket with a slosh. Gently, she rested beside Harley, as they always did when Harley took a holiday, or Joker went to Arkham without her in tow. Their arms and legs touched, but when morning came Harley would either be asleep on the floor or in some ridiculous position—once, with her toes up Pam’s nose, but they didn’t speak on that.

“Uh,” Harley cleared her throat. “I am _pretty darn_ sure it’s the concussing—”

"Concussion.”

“Pam, concussing is a word, I ain’t that injured. Anyway, it’s either the brass-knuckle touch to the head, or the damn good mattress talking, but I’m gonna ask something I’ve been meaning to ask. Pammy, Pam-a-Lamb, Green Eggs and Pam—”

“ _Harley.”_

_“_ You don’t date nobody, and you don’t talk about guys…aren’t you lonely?”

“No. I have my plants. I have my work. I have armed robbery. I’m never bored.”

“Not _bored_ , but, y’know… _lonely_.”

"You mean am I looking to get married?”

“Well…”

“I thought about it a long time ago, before you and I even met.” Pam stared up at the ceiling, where a small spider was crafting a large web. “I used to think that I would get married, have kids, and we’d all grow old. And my husband would die before me—how could he not? I age at a third of the rate of the average human. And when he did, I’d bury him in the garden, return my spouse to the earth…that’s what I wanted, a lovely house and garden.”

“That’s not—”

“Not impossible? Maybe. But over the years, I’ve found that I don’t need anyone to share that house and garden with. I can have that all by myself.”

“Pam, that’s real lovely and all, but what I’m asking is if you’re a lesbian.”

Pam choked on her own spit. “Excuse me?”

“Well, y’know, no _men_ , you only hang around with girls—”

"No, Harley. I’m not a lesbian. I’m not anything. I’m just a plant.”

“That ain’t true.”

“It is,” Pam turned from Harley. “I’m a plant. A flower. No feelings, only thorns. I don’t need anyone. I just take what I need from the earth and rise in the sun.”

“But,” Harley’s voice was cracking. She could feel her sit up, her hand on her shoulder. “But—but—that ain’t fair! You make it sound like the people that need you don’t matter! You make it sound like other people ain’t got feelings, too! What about your friends, Pam? People love you! People need you! _I need you!_ ”

Pam lay still as stone, silent for moments in the soft light of the nearby lamp, listening, unbelieving, as Harley sobbed brokenly. It must be the concussion, Pam thought. People didn’t cry because of her. She had told countless people, friends and colleagues and would-be lovers about her need to be solitary. Her view on how singular she was with the universe. No one had ever given pause, much less try and prove her wrong.

Yet here Harley was, broken in the physical and emotional, crying like a child, crying like it was all she knew how to do in this world.

Awed, Pam sat up, pressing her forehead to Harley’s damp one.

"Don’t go,” Harley hiccuped, tears running over her bruises, her fingers rubbing into her eyes. “Don’t go, leave me, Pam! If I don’t have you—if you went away—I’d have almost nothing—I’d—”

“What do you want, Harley?” Pam asked, utterly confused by her own words, as if she were actually speaking to a child. “What do you want, right now, more than anything in the world?”

“Kiss,” she whimpered. “I want—want a kiss—”

Her forehead. “Here?”

“N-no—”

One trembling eyelid, then the other. “There?”

“N-no—no…”

Each cheek. Her nose. Her chin. Each place the Joker had touched, left his traces on her, Pam kissed, hoping, wishing that the gentle touches would obliterate the memory of the pain from Harley’s body, make it so it only remembered someone who cared, someone who loved.

“N-not there,” Harley sniffled. “Kiss me.”

At last, Pam moved to the swollen mouth, kissing just off-center, where the corners met and puffed.

“Not a…real…” Harley, snuffling, hunkered down into the blankets again, and was instantly asleep.

* * *

 

Harley slept the rest of the day away. Pam busied herself by gardening…for the collective fifteen minutes she could pry herself away from Harley’s side. Each time Pam replaced the icy washcloth on Harley’s head, the blonde would mutter gratitude and ask Pam to lie down beside her.

At first, Pam refused, and it worked for a while…or, well, first the first few hours of morning. It was almost four o’clock when Harley rolled over, wrapping her arms around Pam and whispering into her red hair “Love ya, too, Pam.”

Pam drifted to sleep, too warm and too fuzzy to keep her eyes open any longer.

* * *

 

Pam awoke to a weight over her in the bed.

Harley bent low, her legs curled up on either side of Pam’s lap. This was different than when she’d shared a bed with her last night. The look in her eyes was not childlike and forlorn; there were no tender pleas for understanding and forgiveness in her fingertips. Her lips were trembling, however. There was confliction in her round eyes, and the small tremors in her half-naked body were causing her overlong false purple lashes to quiver.

She was trying to seduce her. _Really_ trying to seduce her.

“I could be anything you want me to be,” there was a small break in her voice. She sounded desperate, sad, lonely, reluctant, horrified, enchanted. So many things, too many things. “I could be your lover,” she leaned closer, until their lips were just barely touching as she spoke. “I could be sweet or nasty. That’s what you want, right?”

Pam sat up, pushing Harley off. At Harley’s confusion, she only folded her arms. Actually, she did look very tempting at the moment, and she didn’t want to give into that temptation. Instead, she took an afghan from the back of the chair and draped it around her shoulders. With her body covered up, she saw just how vulnerable her expression was—she looked like a child forcing herself into a role she knew she wasn’t ready to fill.

“You mean that’s what _he_ would want.”

Harley’s lips shakily parted. She flinched; it was too much to hope for that Harley wouldn’t talk again and just go to sleep without arguing.

“Y-You don’t want me then?” her eyes turned a bit glassy. “B-But, Mista J—”

“What in God’s name does _he_ have to do with this?” she asked almost rhetorically. She knew enough by now to understand that even the slightest decision in Harleys life boiled down to him.

“H-he…I thought you _wanted_ me.” A tight, slightly erratic sort of series of notes escaped her lips. It took Pam a bit to realize it was laughter. “But that’s crazy. How could anyone want me? And certainly not _you._ Just…just forget it. I’m being an idiot, Puddin—”

“Shut up.”

“—doesn’t want me, so who would? Puddin—”

“ _Shut up_.”

“—only ever wanted to touch me, but it always felt…but I loved Puddin—’”

“Shut up!” Pam screamed. But Harley kept talking, even though she seemed totally oblivious to the fact that she shook and started to cry and cry harder whenever she mentioned _that man’s_ name. She kept going on and shaking and crying and going on and shaking and crying, until finally Ivy couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t know what else to do, so she did all he could do.

She smashed her lips against Harley’s, pulling her into a kiss as she was in the middle of a sentence. She could feel the last traces of her trying to form a word against her mouth; she could taste _that man’s_ name on her tongue. A vicious wave of jealousy and greed came over her so hard it nearly knocked her over, so naturally the only solution was to force the name in Harley’s mouth to change. Into hers.

She was startled, at first, but began to kiss her back, her hands unsure of whether to rest on her shoulders or to knot in her hair or to move behind her neck or her back. Harley pulled away, resting her forehead on her chin, her hands in hers, desperately searching for air as though she had never had any in her lungs even from the moment she was born.

 …

Harley spread her battered wings, seeming to flutter above Pam like her lashes, and draped over her, covering Pam like a blanket. She hadn’t felt so secure and safe since he was a small girl. In that moment, she was in awe of her as much as a daughter loved a mother, and she worshipped her. She traced her skin with his hands. Her hands looked so ugly and scuffed compared to the supple and slight curves of Harley, compared to her everything. She was smooth and soft and aglow.

With every soft moan Harley made, each quiet murmuring of Pam’s name, Pam wondered if she was really healing her or just grazing old wounds.

Still, she rained her adoration over her.

* * *

 

Pam awoke the next morning to Harley’s soft sobbing. She turned over in bed with a rustle of the sheets and tentatively brushed some hair over her ear. Even after the level of intimacy they reached last night, every tender touch felt alien and almost criminal to Pam. Harley had already told and proved to Pam that sex really meant nothing to her, because intimacy was demonized by Joker. So when Harley shivered just a little bit from such a small contact, her skin flushing even deeper through her already present ruddiness from her crying, Pam couldn’t help the little spark of happiness in his chest. She had an effect on her.

“Harl…”

“This is the first time,” she hiccupped, not removing her hands from her eyes, “the first time I’ve ever…and didn’t have anything. Not a bruise, or a scar, or even _pain_ the next morning.”

Pam’s green eyes narrowed. “I’m not seeing the issue here.”

“You don’t understand,” her voice was soft and fragile, softer than a morning voice, but completely resolute. Harley didn’t think anyone understood her, and Pam wished she would stop thinking that way, because she wanted to understand. “I…when I woke up and saw that they weren’t there I thought…I thought…”

Pam waited for her. She’d wait until world burned down if she had to. Finally, her shaking stopped, even her lips lost their tremble, and she rolled her head toward her. They stared into each other for a long moment before Harley spoke again, her voice so oddly strangled it was almost like she was out of tune.

“I’m so pathetic, Red. I’m twisted and gross. When I woke up and saw that you hadn’t hurt me, I thought, ‘ _Oh, I guess she doesn’t care after all_.’”

Her answer shocked Pam. Her surprise managed to slip by unchecked to her face before she could stop it. Harley noticed, and began to cry again.

“I’m sick. I’m disgusting. I’m broken. _Broken, broken, broken…_ ”

Pam welcomed her back into her arms and held her for the rest of the day. They didn’t get up, they didn’t get dressed. She just bundled Harley up in blankets and sheets and refused to let her go, trying her hardest not to look away from her or even blink, afraid she would disappear, or run away. All good things in Pam’s life tended to disappear just when they started to get better.

A dark part of Pam wanted to change Harley’s body, so that it forgot every other man that had ever left imprints and warped her into something tainted. She wanted her skin to remember only her tender sculpting touches, even if Harley begged her to stop, scared of alteration. Afraid of getting better.

This time, the gooseflesh on Harley’s skin beneath hers didn’t make Pam happy. She just wanted _her_ to be happy, so badly that Pam wondered if she would ever be happy again.

“I’m going out tonight,” Pam announced, though Harley was barely listening. “I won’t be gone long. I just have to pick something up in town.”

“Don’t be long, okay? Make sure you come back.”

“I promise.”

* * *

 

The Joker cackled, spittle raining over Batman’s masked face. The warehouse was bare but the single chair Joker was chained to; his laughter filled the echoing spaces the way emptiness never could.

“So, you take me out of Arkham like a child-snatcher in the night,” Joker baited. “Knock me out and wake me in this godforsaken shithole, and for what? Yahtzee? Parcheesi? Whatever you young ‘uns play these days. Old Mr. J’s. Out of touch—his Harleen keeps him young.”

“Shut up,” Batman spat.

“Mm?” Joker lost his smile. “This isn’t about _her_ is it? Her old man just _loosened her up_. Real sack-o-oranges type schtick. Dame _deserved it_.”

Though he kept silent, Joker’s eyes widened as if the silence was a rebuttal.

"You? Kill _me?_ Batsy, we both know you have the testicular gumption of a eunuch.”

"I won’t be doing the honors.”

The doors of the warehouse burst open, and a Pamela Isley burst in in all her leafy glory. At her feet, through the concrete, weeds and poisonous sprouts curled up around each step as the smile on her face curled at her lips.

“Why did you agree?” Pam stopped in front of the Batman, bidding her budding poisons away from his path. “Dozens of us have tried to kill this lunatic before, why now?”

Batman looked upward, as if he could see the sky beyond the ceiling. “Joker has taken someone special from me before. After my time with the League, I see now that sometimes turning a blind eye can do more good when done the right way. Will you do it? Will you kill him?”

“Would it take some weight from those goody-goody shoulders if I told you no?” Pam knelt down to pat at her new green children. “I’m only going to make him suffer as much as he’s made everyone he’s ever done wrong. One for each. Even for your Batlings. Death is too good for him.”

“Fair enough.”

“She can’t know about this!” Pam called after him. “Even if she finds out, if she hates me forever, I need to do this. _Someone_ has to do this.”

The doors closed, but they were not approval.

Oh well, Pam thought, she never needed a man’s approval before, anyway.

* * *

 

"Pam!”

Harley wrapped herself around Pam before she could hide the cage in her hands. She set it on the floor.

“Come on in! Are you all right? You were gone a while. Your hands!”

Harley took Pam’s hands, bruised and bloodied at the knuckles as they had never been before.

“I ran into the Caped Dork tonight, don’t worry about it.” Pam swept a lock of hair behind Harley’s ear and bent to the floor. She opened the cage and a fat orange tabby stepped hesitantly into the light. “For…us.”

“OH MY GOD.” Harley scooped it up. The poor thing didn’t know what it was in for; Harley could be very heavy-handed with the things she loved. Pam knew that too well. “It’s almost like we’re a family, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Pam rubbed at her busted hand. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I've gotten a better grasp of both writing and their character since I wrote this, but I'm still adding this here to post it in better format than my blog.


End file.
